1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to image forming apparatuses such as a digital copying machine and a printer and an image printing method of printing a bitmap image created by combining bitmap images for plural pages.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an image forming apparatus functioning as a digital copying machine and a printer, there is known an image forming apparatus having a function of printing a document with plural sheets on one print sheet (so-called N-in-1 printing function). For example, JP-A-2001-197286 discloses a method of forming a combined image of a document with sheets of different sizes or directions and printing the combined image on one print sheet.
In an N-in-1 printing method disclosed in JP-A-2001-197286, sizes of images actually drawn on sheets of the document, that is, image areas, are not taken into account. For example, in the case where a document comprised of A3 size sheets is subjected to N-in-1 print processing, it may be necessary to reduce A3 size to A4 size. In this case, even if a size of an image actually drawn on the sheet of A3 size is slightly larger than A4 size and other areas of the sheet are margins, A3 size including the image area and the margin area is reduced to A4 size. Therefore, an indistinct document including the small image area and the large margins is created.
When a user prints an image displayed on a display of a personal computer (PC), the user often performs print processing without knowing a size of the image or prints the image without checking a preview. In this case, although the user desires to print the image on one print sheet, the image may be divided according to a size of a sheet set in a printer and printed on plural sheets in a divided state. Even if the N-in-1 printing is performed, since gaps are formed among the divided images, it is impossible to obtain a print result desired by the user. When the print result desired by the user is not obtained in this way, sheets, toner, and the like are wasted. Further, since it is necessary to adjust the image size on software of the PC or a printer browser and repeat the printing, a work load imposed on the user increases.